The body of Thomas Haskins was a day away from being cremated – and his closest kin didn’t even know he was dead.A train struck and pushed a car several hundred feet Friday morning in New Haven, leaving a man dead, authorities said.
The crash occurred about 7:10 a.m. on the tracks crossing North River Road just east of Landin Road near Whispering Creek Golf Club.
Fort Wayne Fire Department spokeswoman Stacey Fleming confirmed that a man in the car was killed, but he was not identified.
The car was traveling east on North River Road before it was hit on the driver’s side and pushed about 150 yards to a railroad bridge that spans the Maumee River. The car was slammed against the metal beams of the bridge. The train stopped within a couple hundred yards of impact.
At the time of the crash, the gates were down and the lights were flashing at the railroad crossing, Fleming said. Rescue officials could not say whether the car went around the gates.
About 11:30 a.m., a crane was brought in to lift the red, mangled car off the bridge and haul it to a place where it could be searched. Early reports said a second person might have been in the car. Those reports proved incorrect, authorities said.
Norfolk Southern spokesman Dave Pidgeon said the train was headed to Missouri with two locomotives and 144 loaded cars. He said no Norfolk Southern workers were injured.
Pidgeon said the speed limit for trains on that stretch of track is 60 mph. When the crash occurred, the train was moving about 30 mph, local authorities said.
The Journal Gazette’s Swikar Patel and Anne Gregory contributed to this story.
